UNSEEN ARTIST STATEMENT There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth. - Friedrich Nietzsche As a child, the approach of bedtime filled me with dread. I embodied the quintessential image of a child, tightly clutching his trusty flashlight, haunted by the fear that elusive specters might be lurking beneath my bed, or concealed within the pitch-black darkness of the closet. Those fears, now distant memories, have been supplanted by an artistic fixation bordering on obsession. This pursuit has guided me into a maze of desolate city streets, bathed in the flickering glow of streetlights that seem to scarcely pierce the ominous depths of these urban wildernesses. This body of work explores life in the shadows of an urban jungle. My inquisitiveness is rooted in a need to discover the secrets that lie hidden deep within even the most forbidding corners of the city. To excavate the past, to stare into the faces of ghosts long forgotten. Inspired by the visual aesthetic of Film Noir, this work explores isolated fragments of subjects once there but now gone, as a means of shining a light on what is hidden, if only for an instant.